


Falling

by tothewillofthepeople



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Music, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 13:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12411312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: Lyra learns to play the violin.





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

> this is to celebrate the release of la belle sauvage!
> 
> if there’s anything that doesn’t scan as far as book canon goes i apologize, it’s been a bit since i read them last.

Though she studies at St. Sophia’s, Lyra still lives in Jordan College, because it is familiar and familiarity is supposed to help. The Master of Jordan College, looking older than she had remembered him, told her so in the very early days of her return.

“I hope you understand,” he had said, “that I have only ever wanted the best for you.”

Lyra, sitting across from him with Pan on her lap, had simply said, “I forgive you for attempting to murder my father.”

At the time, he had looked pained. These days, he is much more relaxed, though perhaps that is only a result of the blurriness of old age. Lyra isn’t sure.

The Master finds her in a narrow corridor of the college where she should not be, leaning out the window with her head tilted to one side. “What on earth are you doing here, child?” he asks. His raven, perched on his shoulder, ruffles its feathers and fixes her with a beady eye.

Lyra has been practicing telling the truth. “There’s a scholar who plays music here,” she says. “Sometimes I come and listen.” 

The Master raises his eyebrows, surprised. He looks around as though expecting to see the student, then catches himself and just listens. Sure enough, without voices or footsteps to cover it, a faint strain of song can be heard in the stone corridor. Violin, if Lyra isn’t mistaken. She knows nothing about it.

The sunlight from the wide windows is catching the Master right along the side of his head, creeping under his jaw and tangling lovingly in his hair. Lyra watches him, with his eyes tipped up, listening, and she is struck suddenly with an even sharper awareness of how old he is becoming. How much older she must be, herself. She hugs Pan to her chest. Her dæmon’s fur is like a thousand points of copper in the light, but no less soft beneath her fingers.

Lyra knows the student musician. Not by name, but she recognizes his face, and she knows he studies under the Cassington Scholar. He plays music in the evenings when he needs to think, away from the other students so he doesn’t disrupt their own weaving thoughts. Lyra first heard him in the early winter while taking a sunset walk with Pan through the familiar old halls of Jordan College.

“It’s very fitting, I suppose,” the Master says finally. “Lyra the lyre.”

Lyra narrows her eyes at him. “What are you calling me a liar for?”

The master looks taken aback for a moment before he begins to laugh. “No– no,” he says, “Oh, forgive me, Lyra. That is not what I meant.” She watches, nonplussed, as he presses one hand to his eyes. The raven dæmon leans her head against his ear and he nods at whatever she says. “Come with me,” he instructs Lyra.

They leave the sunlit corridor. The Master moves slowly, sedately, and Lyra keeps pace at his side. She can remember trailing behind him, childlike and unruly, not so long ago. To have him right at her shoulder makes her feel ancient, in a somber way that brings intelligence. They enter the library together. The windows are even larger here, and the space is flooded with orange evidence of the late afternoon sun. Pan disappears into the bookshelves almost immediately, intent on climbing. Lyra simply follows the Master across the dusty floor until he comes to the drawers full of maps.

“Help me with this, would you?” he asks quietly. “These don’t move easily.”

Lyra digs her fingers into the deep grooves of the drawer and pulls. After a moment, it slowly grinds out of place and slides open.

“Excellent.” The Master reaches into the drawer and pulls out the crinkled yellow paper within. “You can leave that, there’s no need to haul it open again in a moment.” He lays the map flat on a nearby table and beckons Lyra closer. She obeys.

“Lyra,” says the Master, “what do you know about astronomy?”

 _I walked into the sky once,_ she wants to say. _Let my footsteps wander right between the old cold stars in the middle of the night._ Instead she says, “Nothing.”

“You were named for a constellation,” the Master says, drawing his hand over the map. “Lyra the lyre. That’s _l-y-r-e,”_ he adds, seeing her eyes narrow again. “The stringed instrument. Rather like a violin, truthfully.”

Lyra bends over the map to look where the Master is pointing. The relevant constellation is right beneath his finger, flanked on both sides by an elegant swan and a too-clever fox.

“It looks more like a harp,” she says doubtfully.

“It is very like a harp,” he concedes. “You see it often in art, however, as either a harp or a violin. It is a very ancient instrument– many of our more modern ones hail it as a grandfather.” He gives the map another fond look. “This constellation is often illustrated as being carried by an eagle. I’m surprised this map doesn’t follow that custom.” He taps one finger down on a large spot of ink. “This is the star _Alpha lyrae._ Also called _Wega._ It is one of the brightest in our sky.” He smiles at her. “Its name means ‘falling.’”

Lyra doesn’t say anything. The master sighs and picks up the map to return it to the drawer. Lyra desperately wants to keep looking at it, to learn the names of the surrounding stars, but she holds her tongue. She can return later.

“There isn’t much music to be found at Jordan, apart from the choir,” the Master says thoughtfully. “Do you have a desire to sing?”

Lyra wrinkles her nose.

“Are there lessons to be had at St. Sophia’s?”

“I didn’t mean to learn it,” Lyra says, truthfully. “I just liked the sound.”

“Hm.” The Master looks her up and down. “I could speak to Dame Hannah, if you wish.”

Lyra shrugs. Then, remembering herself, she says, “That would be kind.”

“In the meantime,” the Master says, “why don’t you go listen to the choir?”

Lyra goes to see the Jordan College choir the next morning. She’s heard them before, practicing on evenings when she and Pan were adventuring around the chapel. It is entirely different to hear them from a pew, where she sits demurely with her hands (and her dæmon) in her lap.

Their voices seem to crystalize the air and make it bright and brittle. Lyra can feel a pocket of cold space right in her heart, as though her chest is trying to create a place for the song to fit. Something about their voices in the bright chapel makes her think of the wind on the ocean and a man she once knew with a seagull dæmon.

“What did you think of that, then?” Pan asks, once they’ve reacquainted themselves with the sunshine outside the church. 

Lyra shrugs one shoulder. 

The Master asks the same thing when he sees her again. “What did you think?”

Lyra doesn’t shrug her shoulder. She has slightly more grace than that, now. “Their voices fill up the air like a zeppelin,” she says honestly. “I don’t think my voice can do that.”

The Master gives her a very warm smile. “That,” he says, “is very fair. I love to listen to them, but most people thank me not to sing.”

Lyra manages a smile in return. She doesn’t go in to listen to the singers again, but when she hears their voices on the breeze the next day she does close her eyes for one moment.

Dame Hannah tries next; she plays piano, and offers to show Lyra her way around the keys. “The Master said you have a new interest in music,” she says, giving Lyra a warm smile.

“Maybe,” Lyra says.

They hold their first lesson on a day full of white sunlight. Dame Hannah teaches Lyra the names of the notes and tries to keep her fingers on the correct keys. Lyra scowls every time her left hand falls into inactivity, or every time her littlest finger can’t properly strike a note.

She tries again the next day, and the next. A brief space in the afternoon where she and Pan join Dame Hannah in her study to press their fingers to the ivory keys. But there’s no joy in it for Lyra. The piano is beautiful but she doesn’t like it. She would much rather listen to Dame Hannah play than attempt the music for herself.

On the fifth day Dame Hannah leaves the room to tend to a scholar with a pressing question. As soon as she is out of the room Lyra smashes her fingers on the keys and smiles grimly at the satisfaction of the discordant noise.

“Didn’t Will play piano, for a while?” Pan asks her quietly.

Lyra catches her breath. “Yes,” she says, after a moment. “Though I think he quit when he was very young.”

Pan tips his head down. “I can see why.”

That makes Lyra smile. When Dame Hannah reenters the room, Lyra tells her politely that she has no wish to keep playing.

She and Pan go back to the corridor to listen to the scholar play. She can hardly hear him through the stone walls, but the music there feels more natural than any of the others. She can feel it along her veins like a second bloodstream. Absolutely vital. Impossibly warm. She almost gives up on finding it for herself.

Then one sunlit afternoon she is strolling with Pan through the narrow lanes of Jericho, and the Gyptians who recognize her fair hair call out as she goes past. The winter chill is lingering to a point that leaves her almost shivering in her blue dress but she uses it as an excuse to keep winding her way among the boats and stalls and people. 

It’s Pan who first hears the music, and he pulls on Lyra’s thoughts from further up the street. Not too far (he never strays too far, not where people could notice) but enough that she doesn’t understand the burst of _excitement-appreciation_ that she feels from him until she has gone several paces forward and can hear the music for herself.

It’s another violin. Probably. It sounds like one, with the same smooth, dragging notes. The closer Lyra gets the more she can feel them vibrate in the air.

“Where?” she asks out loud. “Pan, where?”

Pan appears suddenly and leaps into her arms. She holds him to her breast as he says, “Just around the corner. He’s playing in the street.”

There’s a Gyptian perched on a crate by the riverbank, playing the violin like it’s keeping him alive. He’s young, older than Lyra but younger than the musician at Jordan, and he has the look of some dim cousin of Billy Costa.. Lyra buries her fingers in Pan’s fur and lets the music hurt. 

For one moment the memories are like floodwater behind her eyes. Overwhelming. She can’t find her balance. This man has Billy’s mouth, though it is turned down in a frown as he concentrates on his song. The tune is long and mournful and deep. It makes Lyra think of fingers digging into the earth, or a long expanse of ice, or a river with a figure disappearing on the bank.

“Pan,” Lyra says. “How does he make it sound like grief?”

He doesn’t respond. His face is hidden in the neat white collar of her dress.

The Gyptian’s dæmon is a sparrow who comes to peck at Lyra’s feet when she’s noticed. The Gyptian himself finishes his song with a flourish and gives her an open look. His eyebrows say that he knows exactly who she is. The set of his mouth, no longer frowning, says that he won’t admit it. 

“Do you play?” he asks instead.

Lyra shakes her head and takes a step closer. “Can I see it?” she asks boldly.

He gives her another stare but then lowers the instrument from his shoulder and hands it over. His gloves have the fingertips cut off. Lyra cradles the violin in her hands as carefully as a child.

It’s almost like an old book. Soft to the touch. Gentle. The deep amber wood– almost the same color as Pan’s fur– is marred with scratches. Like a Gyptian, this violin has travelled. She’s half-surprised it isn’t full of saltwater.

“It’s beautiful,” she says honestly.

His face breaks into a smile. “She’s all right,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “Belonged to my sister. I’m only playing it today on account of a cousin borrowing mine to play for some girl he’s pestering.”

Lyra plucks one of the strings. The sound fills her with so much warmth that she has to close her eyes.

When she opens them again, the Gyptian is watching her with a crooked sort of joy on his face. “I’ve been meaning to get rid of it,” he says. “My sister doesn’t play anymore. She told me to chuck it in the river.”

Lyra takes a step back, curling her hand around the bridge of the instrument. He laughs at whatever expression she makes. The sparrow dæmon, which has fluttered back to his shoulder, makes a bright pip of sound.

“I thought so,” the Gyptian says. “Want to take her?”

Lyra blinks in surprise. “I don’t know how to play,” she says. She holds it out again, feeling foolish. She doesn’t know if she can convince her fingers to let go.

He shakes his head. “Like I said, it’s not mine. You’d save me the trouble of trying to carry it back with this.” He kicks the crate he’d been sitting on.

“Thank you,” Lyra says, feeling numb. 

“I’ve even got a state-of-the-art case for you,” he says, hauling up a black battered monstrosity and flipping open its brass hinges. He sets the bow inside and then beckons her closer so she can lay down the violin. “Should keep her safe, as long as you don’t go heaving her over the edge of any buildings.”

“I won’t,” Lyra promises. He closes the case and hands it to her.

“Come play for me sometime,” he says, giving her one last smile. “And take care, you hear?” He ruffles her hair, quick and brotherly, and then steps back to get on with the business of moving his crate. Recognizing the dismissal, Lyra turns away from him and hurries down the street. Pan is across her shoulders and the violin case is pressed to her sternum.

She keeps her arms wrapped around it the whole way back to Jordan College.

“What do we do with it?” Pan asks later. They’re both staring at the violin case, set on the desk in Lyra’s room.

“We have to do it right,” Lyra replies. “We have to start this the right way.”

She and Pan visit the library again and spend an entire afternoon pouring over the star maps and learning the places where they can jump from one constellation to another, around the whole sky. “Lyra should be in the east,” Pan says, and Lyra wrinkles to nose and laughs at the oddity of having her name attributed to something so celestial.

She takes one of the star maps with her when she leaves the library (“It’s not stealing, Pan, I’m going to bring it back”) and takes it up on the roof with her that evening. 

Jordan College is spread beneath her like a labyrinth. She can see scholars through the windows and on the walkways outside. They look stern and severe in their long black robes. She wonders if she’ll ever look so distinguished. The girl she was seems miles and miles away from her now. She isn’t the same Lyra who conducted war in the narrow lanes of Jericho; she isn’t the same Lyra who chased her father north; she isn’t the same Lyra who walked into the sky.

“Were the stars the same in Will’s world?” Pan asks.

Lyra puts her chin on her knees. The map is next to her, held down by the lantern she brought and the battered violin case. The first few stars are beginning to appear on the face of the sky, even though the horizon still has an orange rind of sunlight.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t look.” After a moment she adds, “Maybe there’s a Lyra there too.”

Pan rolls onto his back to look up at the sky. “Can you see it yet?”

“Soon.”

They sit together peaceably in the deepening dark. Devoid of light, Pan looks like a creature made of charcoal. Only his eyes catch the lantern's glow. Lyra presses her fingers into his soft fur and keeps her gaze fixed up. It’s bitterly cold, but they have felt worse.

Every new star Lyra sees is like a new secret being whispered in her ear. She wonders if bringing the alethiometer to the rooftops would illuminate its meaning at all. Then she shakes her head at herself. There are no more shortcuts for golden truth. She knows that.

“There,” Pan says quietly. “Lyra, I think that’s it.”

She lies on her back and looks her fill. There’s nothing between her and the brightest star. No roof, no clouds. The light from it is landing directly on her, in her eyes and one her hands and in between the spaces of her white fingers. She opens her mouth to swallow it whole.

“Are you going to play?” Pan asks.

Lyra sits up and fumbles with the violin case in the dark. “I still don’t know what I’m doing,” she reminds him, but he just makes a noise of amusement. She readies the violin and places the bow against the strings.

The first note is grating and impure. The second isn’t much better. Lyra doesn’t know how to move her numb fingers yet, so she doesn’t try. She just draws the bow back and forth, like a ship upon a sea. The long notes grow sweeter. Less like a snarl and more like a hum. Some of the familiar fire begins to burn in her chest.

She plays for Lyra in the dark. She plays for the girl she used to be. She plays for the stars. Her mind settles into a terribly familiar state of calm, so peaceful that she hardly needs to breathe.

The moon begins to rise. Lyra puts away the violin.

“Someday you’ll be able to play an actual song,” Pan teases her, as they climb off the roof in the starlight. She just laughs at him. She isn’t bothered by not knowing the intricacies of the violin yet. She’s excited to learn.

In the morning, she tells Dame Hannah that she wants a teacher. Dame Hannah tells the Master of Jordan College. The Master is more than happy to supply one: the same scholar that Lyra used to listen to in the hallway behind the chapel. In the afternoons, all through the late winter and spring, Lyra begins to learn.

Her fingers grow calluses. When she isn’t playing, she whistles and sings. Late at night, when she can’t sleep, she and Pan creep back onto the roofs to watch the stars.

When Midsummer arrives it is as sweet and thick as honey. Lyra and Pan go to the Botanical Gardens to sit with Will. The air is full of dust motes that catch the sunlight and give the gardens an otherworldly effect, one that Lyra recognizes with an ache. She sits on the bench. Pan presses himself along her side.

“Here’s something new for you, Will,” she says into the air. Then she lifts the violin out of the case at her feet, sets it beneath her jaw, and begins to play.

**Author's Note:**

> the star “wega” is our star vega, which is truly in the constellation lyra. if you’re in the northern hemisphere, you can see it straight up overhead in the summer months.
> 
> i want you all to know that there were a couple of moments in this where i wanted to fact check some stuff from the books but i don’t have the books here at school with me so i had to fact check using the pdfs i have of this entire series in french. 
> 
> anyway. you can find me on tumblr at [kvothes](http://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x). come talk to me about lyra and will


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